LARs to Microsoft: Please make deal reg programme that works

Tool still useless months after launch

Updated Microsoft is being urged by large account resellers (LARs) to take steps to speed up the deal registration process more than two months after launch.

LARs continue to complain of the Partner Sales Exchange (PSE) – the centralised system underpinning the process – crashing intermittently, forcing Partner Account Managers to manually verify the process at an earlier stage.

"You register a deal and wait in the wilderness for up to a fortnight but the approval process should be near instantaneous," one Microsoft LAR told The Register.

On top of technical glitches, the way Microsoft green-lights deals is incredibly complicated, say partners, as the vendor has committed to pay a fee to the reseller that registers the deal irrespective of whether they close the sale or not.

"This has caused friction between [reseller] people that finalised a deal which had already been registered and were not paid the full fee. The way Microsoft qualifies a deal can be quite ambiguous," said a source.

Another pointed out that in creating an equitable system for resellers, "Microsoft has added complexity to life".

Getting on top of the technical glitches is important to resellers as unless a deal is approved, a fee is not dished out. But the deal reg calamity is also a "distraction from selling", said another reseller.

Not all LARs are entirely dissatisfied with PSE, "any big new system will have some teething issues but these are being ironed out and addressed, this is a priority for Microsoft," said Bytes Technology Group boss Neil Murphy.

Stuart Fenton, EMEA and Asia Pacific president at Insight, argued that "on balance" the programme was working.

He added: "However, clearly Microsoft has a roadmap for making the systems and processes better that we'd like to see shortened.

"I'm not a great fan of deal registration programmes as they create a lot of administration that largely offsets the margin generated by them," he told The Register.

Microsoft did not offer up a spokesman for interview, but the vendor later issued a statement.

"Microsoft takes its ability to support our partners very seriously. We are always focused on resolving any issues partners may encounter with our processes or systems," it stated.

"We encourage our partners to continue to work through their partner account managers to resolve any issues they may have with the incentive programme," Microsoft added. ®